And from venerable technology newsletter Microprocessor Report, come two intriguing technical articles today discussing some of the technology advantages of the chip giant.

Intel shares today closed up 36 cents, or 1.5%, at $23.76.

The first article is by the Report’s Jag Bolaria, who notes that Intel has become more aggressive with low-power chips for so-called “micro-servers” in order to compete with forthcoming designs from licensees of ARM Holdings‘s (ARMH) instruction set architecture.

New chips built on the “Haswell” design, such as the “E3-1200,” can cut the “thermal design power” of server operations by as much as 25%, writes Bolaria, “to a new low of 13 watts.” In addition, there will be new versions of low-power chips based on Intel’s “Atom” family, including “Briarwood,” that follows on the previous “Centerton,” with more capabilities for PCIe and RAID systems, and “Avoton,” a successor to Centerton, which will be built in the next process technology, at 22-nanometer, using the “Silvermount” microarchitecture. There’s also something called “Rangeley” that will be an embedded processor similar to Avoton, but focused on things such as network routers.

Bolaria offers that Intel has a lead on competitors such as Applied Micro Circuits (AMCC) and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), but winners will to some extent be determined by what system builders such as Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) decide to do:

Avoton is about one quarter ahead of AppliedMicro’s X-Gene and a year ahead of AMD’s ARM-based server processor. Calxeda is shipping ARM server processors today, but they use 32-bit CPUs, whereas most server customers specify 64 bits. Intel’s lead, however, may not be enough to shut the door on ARM suppliers. HP’s Moonshot is the model of an architecture-agnostic microserver. In 2H13, Moonshot will launch with Avoton, but by 2014, HP plans to offer versions with ARM processors. In this environment, there is unlikely to be one dominant processor supplier, and the leading vendors will be determined by performance, integration, and power efficiency.

The other article is by the Report’s Tom Halfhill, who writes that contract chip manufacturers Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (TSMC) and GlobalFoundries are “struggling” to catch up to Intel’s lead in process technology, as the company was first to market with three-dimensional transistors, which Intel calls “Tri-Gate,” and which the industry generall refers to as “FinFet.”

After reviewing plans laid out by Global and by TSM in February and April, respectively, Halfhill finds the milestones and plans offered leave both trailing Intel’s pace:

All the independent foundries are still scrambling to catch up with Intel. Their first FinFET processes won’t reach volume production until 2015, three years after Intel’s FinFETs made their revolutionary debut. Second, the foundries’ FinFETs will first appear in “14nm” or “16nm” processes that essentially add the three-dimensional transistors to previous-generation 20nm technology, achieving worthwhile gains in speed and power but relatively little improvement in logic density. And third, lithography costs are expected to jump dramatically after the 28nm node, potentially deterring many chip companies from moving beyond 28nm for quite a while.

Adds Halfhill, chip tools are running into their own obstacles that will hamper the move forward:

Furthermore, potential breakthrough technologies that the industry has eagerly anticipated for several years—such as extreme-ultraviolet (EUV) lithography and carbon nanotubes—are still far beyond the reach of today’s chip designers. Even if a new design’s release date is five years out, designers must settle for relatively conventional fabrication technology. Consequently, today’s 28nm processes will probably be longer-lived than previous generations. And chip designers will feel more pressure to extract performance from architectural innovations instead of relying on the heretofore steady accruals of Moore’s Law.

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There are 4 comments

APRIL 29, 2013 8:58 P.M.

Pat K wrote:

Western Digital????

APRIL 29, 2013 9:01 P.M.

bud u. wrote:

Whew! Where do I start? The ENTIRE mobile world realizes that Intel is behind Arm Holdings in this area. In Andy Grove's book, he refers to the "competitive treadmill." Well, Intel has clearly jumped upon ARMH's treadmill. Apparently, the only people on the planet who do not realize this are the people who wrote this article. Microsoft is in the same boat! WinTel is sinking.

APRIL 30, 2013 12:03 A.M.

wmg wrote:

Maybe they are right and everyone else is wrong.?.?

APRIL 30, 2013 12:06 A.M.

Dan wrote:

Stating the obvious for a while now, but so many investors do so little real homework. Not only in microservers, but smart phones. Intel's Razori is faster and uses less power than Razorm, and Intel is going to market with multichannel LTE in a few months. FinFET, 22n,14nm, 10watt microserver CPUs. There is a phase shift coming, an inflection point. Lookout.

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Tech Trader Daily is a blog on technology investing written by Barron’s veteran Tiernan Ray. The blog provides news, analysis and original reporting on events important to investors in software, hardware, the Internet, telecommunications and related fields. Comments and tips can be sent to: techtraderdaily@barrons.com.